Riddles by the Pool
The dog belonged to the neighbors, but she'd started feeding it anyway. A golden retriever with graying muzzle, it appeared at her back door each evening with the precision of a pensioner expecting his dinner. She named him Arthur, though she'd never spoken to the couple next door—never learned if they'd noticed his disappearance, or if they cared.
Tonight, Arthur didn't come.
Instead, her husband Marcus stood by the glass door, holding out a vitamin D supplement with that gentle insistence that had once felt like caring and now felt like correction. "You forgot again."
She swallowed it dry—a small obedience in a marriage eroded by them. Outside, their pool reflected the dying light, water still and waiting.
"Padel tomorrow?" he asked, already knowing her answer.
"Working late."
He nodded. He always nodded.
She thought about the sphinx she'd seen in Egypt years ago, before Marcus, before the house with its too-quiet rooms. The sphinx had known something about patience—about sitting unchanged while empires rose and fell, while questions turned to dust. What riddle had she been solving all these years? What answer did she think would appear if she just waited long enough?
"I'm going swimming," she said suddenly, surprising herself.
"It's October."
"I know."
She didn't wait for his response. She stepped out the back door, into the cooling air, and there was Arthur—lying beside the pool, watching the water with an intensity that made her pause. The dog from next door, belonging to people she'd never met, more present in her marriage than she was.
She waded into the pool fully clothed. The cold shocked her lungs, cleared everything. The dog stood and walked to the edge, watching her with ancient eyes.
"What?" she asked him. "What do you know?"
Arthur didn't answer. Sphinx-like, he kept his riddles. But as she tread water, shivering and alive, she finally understood: some questions aren't meant to be solved. Some doors you don't open—you walk through them already closed.
She swam to the other side.